Consumers have an ever-increasing array of options for consuming media content, in terms of the types of media content, providers of the media content, and devices for consuming the media content. Media content providers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and effective at providing media content quickly and reliably to consumers.
Media content (e.g., movies, television shows, videos, music, and electronic books) is often streamed over networks using adaptive bitrate streaming for playback on a client device. Adaptive bitrate streaming typically involves determining the client device's bandwidth and hardware resources (e.g., available central processing unit (CPU) capacity) in real time and adjusting the quality of the media content that is requested from a media server for playback on the client device to account for changes in the bandwidth and hardware resources. Fragments at different quality levels, or bitrates, of the media content detailed in manifest data are requested by the client device and stored in a buffer for playback. Because the heuristic algorithms for requesting fragments are implemented on the client device, the media server is limited in its ability to influence the playback of the media content.